


Worst-Case Scenario

by fermisolution



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Exes to Lovers, F/F, Humor, Lesbian Disaster Adora (She-Ra), Lesbian Disaster Catra (She-Ra), Miscommunication as a Plot, No Smut, Technically Beta'd But The Only Comments I Got Were Keysmashes, adora and catra have some hookups with some randos but that is just a plot point not a ship thing, baby's first fic, i hate the word humor but trust me i'm so fucking funny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28827510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fermisolution/pseuds/fermisolution
Summary: Adora is doing great. She is handling this break-up like a champ. She has a new apartment and she has the same old job and she has a great support network of friends. Or, well, maybe not that last one because her ex used to be in that support network of friends until she blocked her number. But other than that! Everything is going great. Until she discovers the girl next door has a very familiar face.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 57





	1. What Are the Odds?

Adora lets out a deep grunt as she kicks open the door to the bedroom. She almost stumbles from the added challenge of holding three moving boxes while standing on one leg, but manages to correct her balance in time to take a couple steps forward and drop the last of her stuff onto the floor of her new bedroom.

She wipes her hands on her athletic leggings and smiles while she lets herself have a little private moment of triumph at getting everything moved in. The apartment is, well it’s a bit shit really, but it’s a one bedroom which is technically better than a studio and, for the first time in her life, Adora doesn’t have any roommates! That’s a good thing! Adora is 21 and finally experiencing what it would be like to live in an apartment, by herself, alone. And what it will be like to sleep in a bed, by herself, alone.

That’s enough of a moment of triumph.

She looks around for a knife to start going at the newest addition of boxes before remembering that she’d left it in the kitchen after Bow and Glimmer finished helping her unload all her cookware. She sent them home after that because most everything was set up except the bedroom, and she’d been packing in a hurry so she wasn’t really sure which box had what and didn’t want either of them to see something that they’d be better off not seeing. But, them being gone did mean she was free to loosen up the tape and rip the box apart with her hands without judgement.

“Shit,” she mutters, when the extra jostling causes something glass to clank around and she realizes why people probably judge her when she does this. Adora grimaces as peels aside the slightly ruined cardboard to reveal a bunch of hastily folded clothes. She can’t tell if they’re clean or dirty, so she lifts up an old t-shirt that she got for free at some event and wears constantly, and takes a sniff. It doesn’t smell like b.o. exactly, but it doesn’t exactly smell fresh either so she just tosses it back in the box. Shoving her arm into the pile of mystery laundry, she starts fishing around for something that could have caused the noise before landing on something solid and wrapped in fabric.

“Hah!” Adora exclaims excitedly, and pulls out an orange hoodie that doesn’t belong to her.

For a moment there’s no sound at all, and then there’s a terrible cracking noise as Adora’s grip tightens around the sweater and the object inside it.

Her breath comes out wet and shallow as she walks to the freshly made bed and slowly sinks down onto the new mattress. It’s soft, both the mattress and the hoodie, but only the mattress is uncomfortably so. The hoodie is exactly as it’s always been. Or, exactly as it’s been since Adora started stealing it from Catra’s laundry when they got their first place together at 18.

Adora remembers now, what she wrapped inside.

With shaking fingers, she gently unties the sleeves of the sweatshirt and reveals a cracked picture frame.

Inside is a picture of her and Catra on their first anniversary. It was pretty simple, all things considered. They got take-out and went to the park and had a picnic. They spent hours laying there on a blanket in the grass, just whispering about whatever nothings were on their mind in the moment.

At one point when the sun was setting, Catra had taken out her phone and snapped a selfie of the two of them cuddled up together, with Catra’s arm curled around Adora’s shouler and Adora so close up into Catra’s space they might have not been occupying separate spaces at all. They both look up into the camera like there’s never been a better day in their lives.

Adora thumbs over the crack in the glass that goes straight down the middle between the two of them. She can almost hear Catra scoff at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

“Bit on the nose, dontcha think?” she’d purr, arms circling Adora’s waist while she looks over her shoulder. Adora remembers how her breath would tickle the back of her neck, warm and hot and comforting and electrifying at all once, as she’d plant a kiss behind her ear. “Seriously, Scorpia, drop it,” she snaps, voice curt and harsh, and making Adora, who is standing alone in a single bedroom, jump.

Adora blinks through several moments of severe confusion before realizing that that last sentence wasn’t said in her forlorn imagination.

_Oh no._

“I’m just saying, Wildcat, I’m not sure if you’re thinking this through.”

That’s Scorpia’s voice. That’s Scorpia’s, Catra’s best friend, voice. That’s Scorpia’s, Catra’s best friend, voice, outside Adora’s apartment. And she is talking to Catra.

Adora doesn’t remember making a choice. She doesn’t remember thinking about her decision to stomp out her room, slam her door, and burst out into the hallway. She registers, later, bumping into a stack of half-unpacked boxes of junk in her living room, after the bruise has already stained sickly purple-green across her thigh. But right now? Adora finds herself standing face to face with her ex-girlfriend, ex-best-friend, ex-fucking-everything. And Catra is standing in front of the door to the apartment next to Adora’s, holding a moving box in one hand, and a key half-inserted into the lock in the other.

* * *

Catra thought, all things considered, she was handling things fairly well. She wasn’t a wallow-er. She could recognize that she was capable of stewing in her emotions, sure, but she didn’t sit there and stew in them, which was really the important thing.

So, after only a couple days of relentless apartment searching since she started bumming it on Scorpia and Perfuma’s couch, she found the perfect place within her price range, made for a decent commute, and had relatively acceptable standards of living. Yeah it was worse than her last one, but it’s not like she’s splitting the rent this time, so fuck off.

She’d arranged to see it as soon as possible. The realator who showed her around went on and on about how great the lightning would be since the apartment was on the corner and she had two outward facing walls. Catra graciously dug her claws into her forearms instead of the realtor's throat to stop herself from complaining that one of the walls was shafted. But, Catra did like the idea of only having one next door neighbor, so she put in her application as soon as she got home.

Apparently, the real estate manager was in a good mood when she called back because they’d just signed a lease for the apartment next to the one Catra was interested in, and Catra would be filling their last vacancy. Catra didn’t care about it at the time, but she hummed her best mock-polite hums with as little condescension as possible and was able to fast-talk her way into a better deal on her month’s rent.

Now, as Catra stands frozen in front of her new place, locked into a 12-month lease, and staring wordlessly at the girl who broke her heart, she thinks maybe she should have paid more attention to the “fellow young professional” the chatty manager had been going on about.

“You didn’t keep the apartment?!” Adora blurts, arms flying up past her shoulders and making her look like some sort of giant squawking bird.

Catra drops the box she’s holding. “Of course I didn’t keep the apartment, dumbass, you paid half the fucking rent!”

“It was a two-bedroom!” Adora takes the half-step necessary to get from outside her door to in front of Catra’s face. She shoves an accusatory finger close enough to Catra’s nose that Catra goes a bit cross-eyed trying to follow it. “You were supposed to get a new roommate!”

Catra bats her hand away, barely keeping enough presence of mind to keep her claws sheathed. “Oh, please! Tell me more about what I’m ‘supposed’ to do, Adora. What am I ‘supposed’ to be doing in your perfect little fucking fantasy-”

Scorpia’s claw comes swinging down between the two of them before Catra can finish her sentence. Adora jumps back with a yelp that, under better circumstances, Catra would find hilarious, but it’s not better circumstances and she’s mostly just pissed off. Catra slowly tilts her head up to meet Scorpia’s eyes with the intent of giving her the most outraged, most murderous glare she’s probably given anyone in her life. But Scorpia isn’t looking at Catra, she’s looking at Adora with her brow drawn into a hard line of confusion.

“What’re you doing here?” Scopia asks, like it isn’t obvious.

Adora’s breathing heavy. She’s flushed and is starting to get sweaty to the point where it almost looks like Catra made her stop mid-work out to come do something more fun. She doesn’t look at Scorpia, doesn’t break eye contact with Catra, when she answers, “I just moved in, almost done unpacking my stuff. Got a 12-month lease.”

Catra clenches her hands into fists behind Scorpia’s arm. Everything about Adora has always been intense. Catra used to like that about her. Especially when that intensity was directed at her. Catra could say that she’s gotten used to the shift in that intensity from love to simmering hatred after the weeks it’s been since things started going bad, but she hasn’t. The expression still looks foreign on Adora’s face.

Every twitch of her frown is an uncanny version of the one Catra used to soothe away with jabs and teasing when they were 12. Every wrinkle and line caused by her furrowed brow is a cruel imitation of the pattern that used to form when Adora got a little too into game night.

Catra straightens her posture. “What a coincidence,” she bites, “I am currently moving in, haven’t started unpacking my stuff, and also got a 12-month lease.”

It’s just the two of them, unblinking and tensed, waiting for the other one to make a move. Then Scorpia moves her claw away to scratch the back of her head. “Oh jeez, this is awkward. I mean, what are the odds?”

Adora jumps again, which Catra does scoff at this time because how did she forget Scorpia was there she asked her a question like 5 seconds ago, and starts stammering some nonsense that’s mostly choked-off, accusatory “you”s and defensive “I”s. Catra rolls her eyes and pivots to face Scorpia.

“Why don’t you go get another load of boxes?” she growls.

“Huh? Oh ohhhhhhh,” Scorpia taps her claw to her temple and then points it at Catra’s forehead. “I hear you, Wildcat, are you sure?”

“Yeah, Scorpia, I’m sure.”

Scorpia leans in way too close to Catra’s face. “Seriously, you can call me if you need me, I’m just gonna stand halfway down the staircase and if she tries-” she whispers, way too loud.

“Scorpia!”

“All right, all right, I’m going!” Scorpia manages to make it down the hallway and halfway through the door to the stairs before she pulls out her phone and wiggles it pointedly at Catra like she was worried Catra wouldn’t know she had it on her or something.

It's quiet enough that she can still hear the faint click of the handle sliding back into place even from all the way from the other side of the floor.

Catra breaks the silence before Adora can regain her bearings. “I’m not moving.”

“But got here first!” Adora squawks. “AND!” she stomps like an immature child, “I left you the apartment, so it’s really not my fault that you moved. Just move again! Since it obviously wasn’t that hard for you-”

“I never fucking wanted the apartment, Adora! God, we broke up and you’re still fucking telling me what to do and how to act, yunno I can’t fucking stand-”

“Stop cursing so much there could be kids living in these apartments that can hear you-”

“Oh my fucking god what did I just tell you not to do.”

Adora inhales sharply through her nose but it sounds more like an ugly snort since her nose is apparently stuffy. She always did get terrible allergies in fall. Catra wonders if she got any more zyrtec after leaving their first aid kit at their old place. Probably not, Catra did always need to remind her to take it. Which usually meant leaving the bottle and a glass of water out for Adora to find and just hoping the dumbass would take a pill when she trekked across the apartment to put it back in the medicine cabinet.

It used to be a careful game. If the bottle was too close to the cabinet, then there might not be enough time for Adora’s brian cells to fire and make her realize she needed some too. But if it was too far, then her girlfriend would sigh and get irritated with Catra for leaving her stuff everywhere. Catra would watch her every morning, seeing if today’s method worked or if she needed to try something new tomorrow. Catra would watch her every morning regardless.

“Ew gross, don’t get your snot on me,” Catra whines, wiping her hands up and down to dry her t-shirt even though she knows Adora didn’t get anything on her.

Adora’s voice comes out weird and nasal as she rubs her nose, “Ugh, shut up, you know you’ve gotten worse things from me on you.”

Catra feels her claws prick into her palms at the reminder of what they used to be. None of this is fair. There is no conceivable reason why the universe would thrust them back together like this. Not when Catra can't afford to break her lease again. Not when her ex-girlfriend, the ex-love of her life, is here at the place that was supposed to be her new home, her fresh start, and talking about their relationship like she has any business keeping it in her thoughts or in her mouth.

“You don’t get to say that shit to me. You’re the one who left,” Catra seethes. “I don’t want anything to do with you or your substances and I’m not fucking moving. So you can either leave or you can stay.” She hopes Adora doesn't catch the way her voice cracks on the last word. She shuts her eyes tight so Adora can't see the tears beginning to well up there. “I don’t care anymore. I’m going to finish unpacking. Don’t talk to me again.”

“Catra, I-”

But Catra has already slammed the door to her apartment. She feels the tears she tried to hold back run down her cheeks as she collapses onto the floor of her new living room. She almost lets herself have a meltdown, almost starts sobbing, hunched over herself on the ugliest carpet she’s ever seen, when she hears Adora’s door slam shut and a string of curse words come filtering through the wall, clear as day.

Oh, _fuck_ no.


	2. Night 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!! Thank u so, so much for your interest in the first chapter. I tried to respond to everybody's comments, but, well I wasn't really "online" before I started doing this so like any response was a comparatively big response and tbh I got a bit overwhelmed! I super, super appreciate anyone who left a comment, even those I didn't get to, and I hope u know I've probably grinned like an idiot and read it 8 times at LEAST. 
> 
> Anyway, I do have some content warnings for this chapter. 
> 
> Adora experiences the brief, mild beginnings of a panic attack which are entirely encapsulated by the paragraph in-between the sentences "But now the quiet of the empty apartment hangs heavy like a weight settled on her chest" and "A loud clank jolts Adora out of her spiral."
> 
> Aaaand then like a warning for the whole thing for use of sex as a coping mechanism to get back at your ex. There's no smut, but there is what I would call gratuitous depictions of foreplay. That's not gonna end with this chapter, and it will take up a fairly large part of this fic. I'm gonna be marking it on every chapter that it's relevant but I also completely understand if u need to bounce.
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope u enjoy! ❤️️

Adora goes to the gym a lot. It’s not uncommon for her to go five or more times a week. She just wasn’t planning on going today specifically, at least not after carrying everything she owned up three flights of stairs. In fact, she’d been planning on spending the rest of the day unpacking everything she owned, but plans can change. Plans can change a lot, apparently.

Some things just had to be worked through on a treadmill. And then the weight-rack. And then the floor, for her core and cooldown routine.

After a truly horrendous attempt at a series of stretches supposedly designed to keep her limber, which maybe she should rethink because she’s never been limber in her life, Adora’s mind feels clearer.

So Catra is her neighbor. That’s fine, that doesn’t mean they have to interact with each other. They probably won’t even run into each other that often. Catra made it very clear that she never wanted to see Adora again before Adora even packed up and left in the first place. It probably won’t even make a difference in the long run. Adora’s just spending a year knowing that her ex is sleeping next door and hating that she’s breathing air filtered through the same vents.

So it’s fine, it’s manageable, Adora thinks as she hoists her gym bag over her shoulder and walks back to her new apartment. Nothing really has to change.

She hasn’t gotten used to the silence that hangs in the air when she opens the door to a place where only she lives. It’s different alone. She’s gotten home before Catra before, sometimes her job makes her come in and out at weird hours, so it’s really not uncommon. But now the quiet of the empty apartment hangs heavy like a weight settled on her chest.

In the back of her mind, Adora hears her breathing grow shallow. The half-put together living room and its implications feel like they’re collapsing in each other and crushing her down into a place where the only sound is the heartbeat thundering distantly in her ears. There’s no one else, how can there ever be someone else, why did she even ever think there was going to be someone-

A loud clank jolts Adora out of her spiral.

Breathing, right, she needs to breathe. In for 10, hold for 5, out for 10, just like her therapist taught her. Shaking herself out, she turns the deadbolt on her door and shrugs off her gym bag and jacket, leaving them by them on the floor because she hasn’t gotten around to hanging some hooks yet.

The clanking seems to be coming from her neighbors on the right. Adora recognizes the sound of pots and pans being pulled out to make dinner, but they must be really loud or something, because it sounds like her neighbor’s kitchen might as well be in Adora’s living room.

It’s weird but she doesn’t think anything more about it as she trudges through the sea of moving boxes taking up her living room.

Adora plops down on her bed and pulls out her phone. There’s over 200 notifications in the groupchat, but that’s not new after Adora stopped checking it when she realized Catra blocked her. Bow sent a message in the chat with her and Glimmer though, asking if she’s free sometime this week or if she wants to go to the movies next weekend. She sucks a sharp inhale through her teeth and shoots back a negative, it’s too much commitment when she doesn’t know how much she’s going to be working. She’s not wallowing or anything.

The pots next door have stopped ringing out and she can hear a conversation happening between the couple who apparently lives there. From what she can make out, it sounds they’re talking about trying out some new restaurant that opened up down the block.

It feels weirdly voyeuristic, so she get up and starts fishing through the moving box closest to her, hoping to find a pair of headphones, when she hears a satisfied “hrmph” followed by a soft thud come from the wall she shares with Catra.

_Oh no._

The hinges of Catra’s front door squeak. It’s late now, too late for it to be Scorpia coming back to help with more moving boxes. Maybe Catra got delivery? Can they even get delivery to their doors in this building or do they have to go downstairs and collect it from outside? Adora should have asked better questions when she was on her apartment tour.

“Hey, glad you could come over,” Adora hears Catra purr through the wall. She’s speaking in a lower tone of register than normal, her voice coming out raspy and seductive in the way that used to drive Adora crazy.

“Thanks for having me,” says a voice Adora doesn’t recognize, suggestion dripping off every syllable.

“Mm,” there’s a pause as Adora imagines Catra looking this mystery girl up and down, “That is the point, babe.”

Adora’s mind reels for some kind of explanation that’s not the obvious. There’s no way, Catra cannot be doing what she thinks she’s doing. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Unless-

“Ah, wow, lotta boxes,” giggles mystery girl.

“Yeah, I just moved in. Let’s just say I got a little excited to explore some newfound freedoms.”

Oh. Yeah. That’d do it.

Adora kicks herself mentally. Catra’s got every right to be doing what she’s doing. Even if she knew how thin the walls are, Adora’s just a neighbor to her now. A neighbor who should do the polite thing and put in some headphones and ignore it until they stop. It’s Adora who doesn’t have the right to have her hands shake the way they do when she goes back to rooting in the box. It’s gonna be fine when Adora get her headphones, Catra’s not that loud anyways she probably won’t even-

“Oh, fuck,” Catra moans loudly.

The girl giggles again. “Thought you were gonna top?”

God, Adora hates that voice. Who giggles this much during sex? At least not with a hook-up. It’s weird.

“I’m flexible.” Adora can hear the smirk in Catra’s voice, can picture it sliding comfortably across her face. She's seen the expression a thousand times before, directed at her.

There’s a pause, followed by a couple dull thuds that Adora can’t pick out the meaning to. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about being flexible,” the girl gasps. She sounds like she’s pressed up against the wall Catra shares with Adora.

Adora’s fists clench. That’s just rude. Adora opens her mouth to say something, or maybe kick over a box and hope something breaks and that the clatter will ruin the mood enough for the girl to go home and Adora will never have to hear Catra hook up with someone other than Adora again. Which is the same as never hearing Catra hook up with anyone. Because Catra is never going to want Adora like that again. Obviously.

The sound of bodies falling onto the mattress comes before Adora can do anything. Catra whines, high and loud, “God, you’re so much better at that than my ex.” She damn near shouts the last two words through the wall.

Adora drops the box she’s holding and is out of the house before she can hear mystery girl’s reply, if she even has one beyond continuing doing whatever she's doing to Catra’s body.

Adora wants to scream. Everything about this is so fucking unfair. She knows Catra isn't that flexible, not in the way she's talking about. It’s pathetic, maybe, but she really thought she was special in that way. Special to have Catra’s trust like that, to take care of Catra like that. She thought that when they were together it meant something. She knew that Catra didn't give a damn about her anymore, but the times before Catra got sick of her. Those had been good, hadn't they?

Clearly not, at least to Catra anyway.

It's chilly out. Adora’s lucky her jacket was laying on the floor by her entryway or else she never should have remembered it in the haze she left her apartment in. Her keys are in here too, thank god.

Adora takes a deep breath, things could be worse.

After a while, her feet take her to familiar streets. There’s a gay bar around this neighborhood Catra and her used to go to fairly often, Adora faintly remembers. She’s coming at it from a new angle than the walk from their old place, but she’s always been pretty good with maps. If she just walks down 7th a little bit and then, yes, there’s the hospital and one of those weird triangle parks! Which means if she just heads a block down the road that looks way too suspiciously upscale and residential to have a dive bar on it’ll be here.

Oh god why is she here. She does not want to be at a lesbian bar while the girl she’s loved her entire life is fucking someone else, at least partially to spite her.

Or, wait. The girl she’s loved her entire life is fucking someone else, and she is at a lesbian bar. There could be a solution there. She could use a drink, at least. This is how normal people get over a break-up right?

Adora catches her reflection in a nearby window. She doesn’t look terrible, per say, she did shower at the gym before changing into a clean set of exercise clothes, but she doesn’t look like someone who intended to be going out tonight either. Glimmer taught her this trick once, when she got sick of Adora’s terrible fashion sense and tried to get her to upgrade her wardrobe from “gym clothes” to “athleisure,” where if she bunches up her t-shirt and pulls it tight in the back it turns into a make-shift crop top. Adora thinks it makes her proportions look weird, but Glimmer and Catra were both very vocal that it was a good look. Catra was actually a little more than vocal, at the time.

Adora shakes the nostalgia off and gives herself a self-conscious half turn in the window. It’s somewhat cute, she guesses. It’s not ideal, but it can sort of pass as intentional, and it does show off her abs.

She bounces up and down on the balls of her feet a couple times. Adora can do this, she can go to a lesbian bar by herself. She can get a drink. She can maybe talk to somebody if they talk to her first. It’d be a nice confidence boost.

Yeah, this is a fine idea. This is a healthy idea. She is “moving on.” She is not thinking about her ex or the way her ex sounds when she’s getting railed through their shared bedroom wall or the way her ex used to cuddle her for hours after. Or the way Catra’s skin felt as smooth as velvet.

Adora struts determinedly to the end of the line and fishes out her phone from her jacket pocket. Bow replied to her turning down his offer of a group hang, letting her know that both he and Glimmer know she’s probably feeling sad, but she’s welcome to crash on their couch anytime again and that they hope she feels better soon.

“dw about me i’m doin fine!!!” Adora shoots back, purposefully denying autocorrect the authority to capitalize the “i” so her message sounds more casual.

“i’m just saying it would be fine if you weren’t!!” Bow responds immediately.

“no no i’m good, i’m at the bar right now lol. self care haha”

Three dots flicker across the bottom of her phone screen for a full minute.

“WHICH BAR” Glimmer interjects before her boyfriend can wrap his head around a response to Adora’s message.

“.... yk the one down the street from the hospital with the dog that sometimes wanders in”

“YOUR AT THE LESBIAN BAR??!?!”

“i’m not doing nything weird, I’m just getting a drink!”

“omfg”

“adora, are you sure u want to be drinking alone rn??” Bow steps back in.

“did u even remember cash this time????”

“Fuck, I forgot to remember cash this time.”

“Ha!” barks a woman behind her and Adora nearly jumps a foot off the group in surprise. “You need someone to hold your place in line, Blondie?”

Adora swivels around and comes eye level with a pair of biceps that rival most anything Adora’s seen at the gym.

“Hngh,” Adora says.

The woman laughs and Adora jolts her head up to meet the noise, cheeks flushed in embarrassment at getting caught staring. “Or, Blondie, if you’re interested, I could buy you a drink.”

Oh, she really shouldn’t do this. The woman looks a bit older, her faces creases in ways Adora’s has yet to develop, and she’s jacked with muscles in places Adora didn’t know existed. The sides of her head are shaved with little spiral designs cut into her undercut. She looks like she could bench press her. She’s exactly Adora’s type.

Adora bites her lip, and forces herself to keep her eyes up in the vague direction of the woman’s face and not ogling the line of her deltoids. “I… might take you up on that, but, like, just do you know or whatever I’m only really here because my ex is…” Adora trails off. How does she explain the situation to a woman she’s never met. She feels like she owes her some kind of explanation for why she’s like this right now.

The woman laughs again. “You and me both, I’m only here instead of down the street because I know my ex is gonna be there tonight.” There’s a sadness that flashes across her eyes that Adora knows. “But,” she steps closer, sadness gone and replaced by something hungry, Adora’s eyes flicker back down, this time making it far enough to notice her exposed midriff and cut abs, “neither of them are here right now, so if you want, I can take you inside and buy you a drink, and we can see where this goes.”

Adora blinks. It’s not a good decision. But it feels so good to know exactly what someone wants from her for once, instead of the anxiety and the guesswork and just how frequently Adora always got it wrong.

And then Catra’s in her apartment, playing the same game, showing Adora just how little she cares about her through their sadistically thin shared bedroom wall. She was really rubbing in how over her she was, wasn’t she? Pitching her voice like that to get under Adora’s skin, the faked moans, she knew how thin the walls were the whole time and was using it to her advantage.

Plus, well, the lady’s hot, and if Catra wants to play, she should know by now that Adora has never been good at losing.

“Actually,” Adora lets a cocky smirk spread across her face, “I just moved into a new apartment not too far from here. If you want to skip the line, we can head there and I can let you some of the beers I was using to bribe my friends to help me unpack.” Adora winks.

The woman blinks, maybe that expression hadn’t been as seductive as Adora thought it’d be. She whistles and claps her hands together once, “Damn, Blondie, I gotta give it to you, that’s pretty bold. You don’t even know my name.”

Adora hadn’t really cared to ask, but her mouth’s moving faster than her brain at this point so she snipes back, “Well mine’s Adora, not Blondie and you hadn’t taken issue with that so…”

“Touche Blondie, but before you get ideas about nicknames, mine’s Huntara.”

* * *

Catra and the girl on top of her wince at the thud that comes from Adora’s room. Catra’s arms are pinned above her on the bed in a way that felt kinda fun a second ago but the feeling’s quickly starting to dissipate after hearing Adora’s door slam and her heavy footsteps thud down the hallway. Stupid Adora ruining her sexy times even after she broke up with her.

“Don’t worry about that,” Catra arches her back and tugs on the girls grip playfully. “It’s just my neighbor, I’ll deal with it later,” she lies. She has no plans to deal with it at any date.

The girl doesn’t look convinced. “You know, you don’t have to fake your moans, right? Like if you don’t like something that I’m doing you can just tell me?”

Ugh, this girl is way too sweet from them to be doing what they’re doing. Catra literally doesn’t even remember her name because she was messaging like 3 girls trying to gauge which one of them could get to her apartment fastest.

Plus, the care in her eyes is freaking Catra out. She just wanted a rebound fuck, was that so bad? How much of it was motivated by pissing off Adora aside, this is not the right vibe for a tinder hookup.

Catra hums noncommittally and gets back to work trying to swallow this chick’s tongue down her throat. The girl lets her without any further duress, thank god.

After they’ve finished up and Catra’s mental list of shit she’s not into has grown exponentially, Catra sees the girl out of her apartment with a grunt and a dismissive wave.

It’s good that’s out of her system. Adora knows Catra’s not thinking about her, and Catra really, really hopes that she’s the one who got to break to Adora that the walls are thin. Now it’s just 14 months of spending as little time in this fucking apartment as possible so she doesn’t have to hear whatever stupid shit Adora will do when she lives alone.

Probably a lot of singing along to dumb pop songs on pandora of all things. The ads are going to drive Catra crazy.

Catra’s laying in bed, trying to find the motivation to get up and brush her teeth, but knowing she’s probably just going to pass out before that happens, when she hears Adora’s door smash open and two sets of footsteps come stumbling through.

A low, deep, scratchy voice filters through the wall, “Hah, you weren’t kidding about the boxes, huh, Blondie?”

“I just moved in today! It’s normal.” Catra can imagine Adora crossing her arms to that, all petulant and defensive.

“Didn’t say it wasn’t,” the weird unfamiliar voice placates, “you gonna get me that beer or let me know which way it is to the bedroom?”

Catra scrambles to unplug her phone, swipe her airpods from the floor from when she’d tried to put them on her bedside table and missed earlier, and book it to the living room.

Of course Adora would pull some shit like this. Or course she’d turn it back on Catra. That girl never knew when to let things lie, except when it came to the things that actually mattered.

Catra turns up the volume on Aye Nako as far as she can without worrying about getting permanent ear damage, then ticks it up three more notches. Fantastic, nothing is going to get through that- nope that sounds like Adora just yelped in surprise? Pleasure? Catra’s not gonna think about it any farther.

She swipes aggressively her phone to get to the last page and swears when her claw scratches the glass. Whatever, she has a screen protector and it’s not the first time this has happened, it’s fine. She opens tinder and flips to the girl she’d been talking to before- Abby? Apparently her name was Abby based on her profile, and starts typing.

“Hey beautiful srry to ghost u earlier somethin came up :( nyway if ur still down to meet up r u free 2morrow? 😏”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this thing where I can't listen to music that effects me emotionally while writing because I just end up staring at the ceiling for an hour, imaging it is the year 2010 and I am watching an elaborate catradora princess prom amv set to so special by muna in my middle school library. So I just put one kind of random song that I wouldn't listen to normally on repeat and go from there? I made an absolutely hellish playlist of my most heinous crimes that you can find here, if you so chose to step inside my twisted mind, because it's really honestly fucking hilarious and I'm obsessed with how much this hobby if gonna fuck up my 2021 spotify wrapped:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/36yNWsqQWN0GX3S5LSsfGP?si=F9rzFaVSTHG3sEyJVngtGw
> 
> Also this fic has a regular playlist with normal songs or whatever:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1imsIuCJr4JIq4lwJv2VbL?si=Uibt14xLR8KQ9Jjj4_pUnA
> 
> Feel free to drop a song rec in the comments or lmk on twitter @butchadora! Tysm again for reading!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Tysm for reading!! This is my first fic and I know it's not perfect, but I'm having a good time writing it and I hope you're having a good time reading it too. If you want to hang out you can find me on twitter @butchadora!! <3


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